Rank 1 to 3 I have rated by the number of LPWAN base stations. If I rate by the density of the base stations per square meter then the Netherlands is in the first place. We could also rate by the number of base stations per inhabitant. I decided to rate the base stations per country. The time limit is the planned expansion by end of 2017.

SIGFOX has less than 1600 base stations in France. In Spain, it is even less. In Germany, SIGFOX is not assessable yet. In Germany, there is no public LoRaWAN as well. In Switzerland, LoRaWAN is on a public network. However, the network covers only a part of the country.

I am curious how it looks at the end of 2017. I will keep you posted.

If you are interested in latest LPWAN modules, evaluation kits or antenna concepts, then do not hesitate to drop an email to
harald.naumann (at) lte-modem . com

2 Comments

Maybe some technologies are more frugal than other and explain the difference. Sigfox has a complete France coverage with 1/10th of the station as Netherlands – which is definitely smaller in surface. It’s like saying I can fill the bag with more apples than pineapples, so apples win over pineapples

Mirmit, SIGFOX is proud to have less than 1,600 BTS in France. This means 402 km2 per BTS. 13,000 NB-IoT in the Netherlands means 3.2 km2 per BTS
SIGFOX has 156 dB link budget and NB-IoT has up to 164 dB. As higher the link budget as better is the range or wall penetration. SIGFOX never ever can cover France with < 1600 BTS. Just use the Egli radio propagation model and calculate the range on a 30-meter high tower and node 1 meter high. Do it on 50 meters. I have done it for the 856-meter high skyscraper in Dubai to get the 48 km promised by LoRa. It is impossible to cover the range even if the earth would be a flat pancake. The earth is no pancake. The curvature of our nice green globe nobody can cheat 😉 And the radio propagation model of Egli is just based on plain Physics as well. Nobody can cheat the Physics. 😉
Rate May 2017: The winners are the Chinse by the number of BTS. The winner by BTS density and coverage are the Dutch and the will by the number of NB-IoT networks per country will be the Germans.

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Why I wrote the IoT M2M Cookbook

In my more than 20 years working with a manufacturer and in distribution I gave the same hints and recommendations to developers of wireless applications again and again. In May 2012 I made the decision to write the story that I have to tell weekly to customers in a book. The target is to guideline developers from the idea for an IoT / M2M device to a final product with mass production.
http://www.gsm-modem.de/M2M/m2m_iot_cookbook/